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Parashat Ki Tetzei: Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19
September 1, 2012
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg


This week’s parasha mostly consists of issues between people, whether between neighbors, within a family, between the underprivileged and other members of society, or even between people and animals.

A theme running through many of these laws is that of dignity. Even if we need to take the only garment a person has as a pledge for a loan, we need to return it to that person every night so that her or she may sleep in it. We are not allowed to take someone’s upper millstone in pawn, because that is akin to taking their life (their means of grinding grain for bread or olives for oil.) We must leave the overlooked sheafs and grapes in our fields for the poor and the stranger. These and many other laws in the parasha emphasize people’s humanity and aim for a sense of equality and fair treatment within society.

In addition to these laws, issues pertaining to women are very prominent in this Torah portion. Here, it becomes more challenging to see the theme of dignity and humanity in the laws.
We read that if a woman is found not to be a virgin when she marries, she is stoned to death on her father’s doorstep; that a virgin who is raped is then forced to marry her rapist; that a wife who ceases to please her husband can be given a bill of divorce; and that a woman who is widowed before she has children must marry her husband’s brother.

Most of these laws seek to ensure that women get married and stay married. In the context of a traditional society, adult unmarried women are unprotected and do not have independent means to sustain themselves. And so these laws are meant to protect women. But it is challenging to know how to approach these laws as a modern person and a feminist. We can understand that they are meant to protect women in their context, but this is not satisfying. The text does not acknowledge the actual experience of women who are raped, for instance, and what it might mean for them to have to marry their rapists.

In her essay on this parasha in the Women’s Commentary, Judith Plaskow approaches these laws through a larger theme of the parasha, that of memory. In this parasha, we are told to remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt, and this is why we are to observe certain commandments concerning how we treat the poor and the widow. We are told to remember what Amalek did to us as we escaped Egypt, attacking us behind, and therefore we are commanded to avenge Amalek and blot out their memory.

But then there are other things that the Torah portion alludes to which we don’t seem to remember very clearly, such as Miriam’s leadership and legacy and the reason for her being stricken with “tzara’at.” And there are yet other things that we aren’t told to remember at all. In Plaskow’s words, “The Torah in this section offers no store of memories of women’s perspectives and experiences that could provide the basis for an alternative ethic.” Meaning, we remember certain things (we were slaves) and those memories obligate us to act according to certain ethical standards. But we don’t remember other things, such as what it might be like to be a rape victim who is forced to marry her rapist.

This points to the ethics of memory itself and raises the question of what we choose to remember and act on and which memories we choose to suppress, and how does that choice affect us, our families, and our communities in the present?

I look forward to exploring this question further with you tomorrow.

Shabbat Shalom